medicine

Disability rights professor shares his story at Watson Symposium
By Kassie Brabaw
April 11, 2014 - 12:41am
The daylong conference featured speakers who talked about topics including bio-ethics and contemporary medicine.

In 2010, William J. Peace was critically ill with a badly infected wound. Doctors told him he would be bed-bound for at least six months, maybe a year. But, they said, the wound might never heal. He might never be able to sit in his wheelchair or work again. Then they said the words that Peace said people with disabilities hear too often, “we can make you comfortable.”

They said it was his choice – he could stay on his current treatment track and risk being dependent on other people for the rest of his life, or he could stop all treatment and die comfortably. Peace chose to live.

Paramedic demonstrates the art of saving others
By Meera Jagannathan
November 13, 2012 - 7:10pm
Lon Fricano shares the rush he gets from responding to emergency calls for nearly 50 years.

Lon Fricano, 64, has been shot at twice. He’s been in burning buildings and almost gotten stabbed. He’s been chased by street gangs and attacked with baseball bats. Recently, he fought alongside six firemen, three police officers and two ambulance crews to subdue a person violently high on the drug known as “bath salts."

A self-described “adrenaline junkie,” the veteran paramedic said he loves the rush.

“It’s like being high, really,” he said.